The DAO, by how its structured, had to raise the money beforehand, and it did so using etherium in a public manner. You could go to this page the day of the au

The DAO, by how its structured, had to raise the money beforehand, and it did so using etherium in a public manner. You could go to this page the day of the auction, before it started: https://juicebox.money/#/p/spicedao https://juicebox.money/#/p/spicedao From that page, you could tell how much money they had raised in etherium, and you could guess their cap from that. I also give it better than even odds that the person bidding on behalf of the DAO was in discord, bragging about how much money they had to bid, right up until they won. If you were interested in this auction selling for a large amount, would you not google a bit and find the spice DAO? Would you, perhaps, join their discord server, get on the auction call, and bid it up a bit? This seems like something that quite reasonably could happen. That's what I was suggesting above. One bidder is the DAO guy, the other bidder is someone who knows how much the DAO will bid, since it's public, and so raises it up to near that price for some ulterior motive, whether it's because they get a profit off of a high sell, or because they want the idiots who put money into the DAO to lose it. I have no doubt there are many people in both camps who were aware of the DAO before the auction started.